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    The People of The City

    Looking for something that smells good in Houston? Snub the corpse flower & hangwith master roaster Ken Palmer

    Caroline Gallay
    Jul 16, 2010 | 8:39 am
    • Much like wine tasting, cupping requires serious finesse to evaluate thesubtleties of each varietal.
    • Ken Palmer travels all over the world to secure the highest-grade coffee beans.Here, in Costa Rica.
    • About 400 man-hours go into producing one 152-pound bag of green coffee.
    • Palmer gets the beans when they're green and roasts them in small batch drumroasters under close supervision.

    There's something brewing in Houston, and it smells like nothing I've ever encountered. No, I'm not talking about the punctuality-challenged corpse flower at the Houston Museum of Natural Science — I'm talking about Java Pura, a start-up high-end coffee brand that aims to change the way Houstonians think about coffee.

    The man behind the mission is Ken Palmer, a former Alaskan ice-fisherman turned master roaster. You might not see him out and about (he has to attend to hand-roasting Java Pura's beans, and he's not much of a people person, anyway) but it's his taste buds that select what's hands down the best coffee you can get in Houston.

    (For some context, specialty coffee is made up of the top 10 percent of beans, in terms of quality. Palmer buys and roasts only beans within the top two percent of that 10 percent.)

    A native of Portland, Oreg., (Palmer got paid $100 to drive a car to Alaska from Oregon, and decided to stay to work on the Alaskan Pipeline before taking up crabbing and fishing) Palmer spent 10 years splitting his time between Alaska and Hawaii, where he spent the fishing off-season. It was in Hawaii that he took a job at a coffee processing plant to pass the time and began teaching himself how to roast coffee beans.

    In 1987 Palmer made an acquaintance that would straighten out his life's path, at least a little, and point it to coffee. Alfred Peet, the founder of revered Peet's Coffee & Tea, was in Kona for a cupping contest. He took a liking to our restless well-traveled, tattooed commercial fisherman and the two struck up a friendship, spending a few weeks in Hawaii each year roasting beans and tasting coffee for hours together each day.

    Palmer says his mentor's taste was so accurate, he once detected a trace of cinnamon in the water supply used to brew a single cup of coffee.

    After three years Palmer took Peet's advice to open his own shop, and quit fishing for good to move back home to Portland and focus on coffee full-time. He opened BJ's Coffee, which still exists today under his ex-wife and will likely be taken over by his son. The consulting jobs Palmer picked up when his marriage ended sent him all over the coffee-growing world — Brazil, Columbia, Peru, Nicaragua, Mexico and Ethiopia (to name a few), where he stayed two years.

    Palmer changed scenery again in 1997 when he moved to Houston on a whim with no intention of staying, and wound up in the employ of Java Pura when he saw opportunity in our less-than-sophisticated coffee palates.

    "Houston is 15 years behind in the coffee industry," Palmer says. "It's a wide-open market."

    How Palmer ended up at Java Pura is a story in its own, but it took "running off to Costa Rica" for a couple months to convince the bosses to let him roast.

    The rest, as they say, is coffee history. Java Pura, whose offices are tucked away in an unlikely warehouse space off Chimney Rock, has so far focused on catering and supplying coffee to businesses, but plans to open a storefront later this year (joy!!). Until then, you can find Palmer hand roasting hundreds of pounds of coffee a day while he works to break the bosses into his coffee clique.

    He's bringing them to the Roaster's Guild Retreat in August — we just hope he comes back.

    unspecified
    news/city-life

    This Week's Hot Headlines

    Shaq surprises Houston restaurant with $1,000 tip and more top stories

    CultureMap Staff
    Jul 12, 2025 | 11:00 am
    Shaquille O'Neal Ninfa's Uptown
    Courtesy of Ninfa's
    Shaquille O'Neal had lunch at Ninfa's Uptown.

    Editor's note: It's time to look back at the top Houston news of the week, starting with a surprise visit — and big tip — from Shaq. Plus, Houston ranks among America's most overpriced cities, and rents rise in Sugar Land. Get the details on our most popular stories below, then find the best things to do this weekend here.

    1. Shaquille O'Neal leaves $1,000 tip at Houston Tex-Mex institution. NBA Hall of Famer and media personality Shaquille O’Neal surprised the crowd at The Original Ninfa’s Uptown when he stopped by for lunch, posing for pics and leaving a very big tip.

    2. Veteran Houston bartender shakes up the Heights with new tropical bar. The woman behind your favorite bartender’s favorite bar has quietly opened a new cocktail spot in the Heights. Called Berwick’s Birds of Paradise, it’s the latest project from Double Trouble owner Robin Berwick.

     Berwick's Birds of Paradise bar Robin Berwick Owner Robin Berwick took inspiration from hotel bars for BBOP.  Photo by Vivian Leba  

    3. Houston is one of America's most overpriced cities, study finds. In what may come as a surprise to some local residents, a new study ranks Houston among the 10 most overpriced cities in America.

    4. This Houston suburb had the highest apartment rent prices in June. Apartment rent prices in June were more expensive in Sugar Land than anywhere else in Houston, according to the latest monthly rent report from Zumper.

    5. Houston influencer opens an antiques-filled boutique hotel in Montrose. 109 Stratford Street in Historic East Avondale has recently opened as a nine-room boutique hotel, The Marlene Inn, from owner and Instagram influencer Lily Barfield.

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